


The Meanings of Words

by Nightfoot



Category: Tales of Vesperia
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Fluff, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 01:23:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15353136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightfoot/pseuds/Nightfoot
Summary: Estelle has asked Judith to marry her.  Judith is going to need to think about this.





	The Meanings of Words

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever Judith/Estelle fic! And apparently the first one on AO3, too. Maybe this can be the start of a new trend!

Judith stared at Estelle.  She had never been a women of many words, but now even the few she usually had a grip on fluttered away.  After a long silence of staring at Estelle’s earnest face, she managed, “We… what?”

“We should get married!” Estelle gushed, clutching Judith’s hands.  “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and, well, I can’t think of anyone else I would rather spend my life with!”

The word sounded foreign as it bounced around Judith’s head.  _Married_.  It was a word she had never even considered applying to herself.  Without even consciously deliberating it, she’d always thought of it as a concept that happened to other people. 

A bird in the tree behind their bench tweeted and elsewhere in the park – seemingly in a different world – some kids yelled and went about their evening.  She and Estelle had gone out for dinner and then taken a walk in one of Dahngrest’s bigger parks.  It had been a typical evening to spend time together, and yes, Estelle had always called these evenings ‘dates’, but that word had never felt right to Judith for reasons she couldn’t quite explain.  They had been spending these days together for four years now, and Judith didn’t ever want to stop having them, but… marriage?

“Why… do you want to get married?”

Estelle’s face had been flushed with excitement, but now that flush was turning to mortification.  “You… you don’t want to?”

“I.  Well.”

“I thought… it’s just… I love you, and I thought you… um….”  She stared at the bench, blinking quickly as tears began to well up.

Judith had fought more monsters than she could count, but had never felt so overwhelmed.  No words came to mind.  The sight of Estelle furiously trying not to cry, arms folded around herself, distressed Judith more than she knew how to handle.  Estelle meant the world to her and seeing her so upset was physically painful, so Judith reacted the only way she knew how and reached out to wrap an arm around her. 

“No.”  Estelle jumped up away from her touch.  “Don’t – you don’t need to – I’m so sorry!”  She took off in a run.

Judith rose from the bench. “Estelle!”

She didn’t turn back. 

* * *

 

 

A couple of hours later, Judith sat on the roof of the Brave Vesperia building and stared at the stars.  She wasn’t sure where Estelle had gone and was guiltily glad of that because she still didn’t know what to say. 

Words came so easily to Estelle.  She babbled them like they came from a spring in her chest, flowing from her mouth to clarify her every thought and feeling.  Judith felt like her words came from rainfall in the desert, precious, spread thin, and brought out only when necessary.

No word was more obvious in this respect than _love_.  Estelle said it easily and casually, peppering her words to Judith with it as if afraid Judith couldn’t tell from her every look.  Judith had never been as comfortable with the word.  It occupied a strange space where it was far too powerful to whip out in everyday conversation, but also too simple to fully encompass the way she felt for Estelle.  She’d said it to her father once.  She’d said it to Estelle once.  She hadn’t said it again. 

But why should she need to?  It was something Judith had always struggled with.  She could say words easily, because words alone were just sounds.  Words that were attached to emotion, though, were harder to speak.  Her deepest thoughts, the way she felt about her loved ones, these things were so tied up in meaning that to strip the concept from the feeling and turn it into an audible sound seemed to neuter them.  For years, Judith's only priority in life was cleaning up her father's blastia, until Estelle had stumbled into her life and given her someone to fight for.  She was fire and light that sparked passion in Judith's cool determination.  How could four letters fully convey the way Judith's heart soared at Estelle’s touch?

It was better, Judith thought, to not try to squish and distort her deep feelings into simple words.  Could Estelle not tell that even if Judith didn’t say it, the concept of ‘I love you’ roared in her chest every time she picked Estelle up to spin her around and kiss her giggling lips?  Wasn’t it obviously love powering her hand when she stroked Estelle’s side as they lay together in bed? 

Every problem Judith had with saying the word _love_ was magnified a hundredfold in the word _marriage_.  It felt alien to take a partnership as deep and complex as that of a couple in love and strip it down to a legal document, like trying to capture the beauty of a symphony in sheet music.  Girlfriend?  Fiancée? Wife?  Judith wasn’t comfortable using any of those words to describe Estelle, because she was _Estelle_ , perfect and precious, defying categorization. 

A question tickled at her mind that she knew wasn’t her own.  Overhead, a shadow crossed the moon and Judith smiled at Ba’ul.  The memory of Estelle asking Judith to marry her flowed through her mind and out to Ba’ul, tinged with an aftertaste of Judith’s confusion and distress.

Ba’ul’s response came quickly as a feeling of reassurance flowed back into her.  Reassurance, and a question.  Did she not want to marry Estelle?

All she could reply with was more confusion.  She did want to be with Estelle for the rest of her life, but the prospect of formalizing that with a legal marriage made her feel odd, and like it would devalue something too precious for words by stripping it down and reducing it to definitions.

Understanding came back to her, along with a hint of confusion of Ba’ul’s own.  Entelexeia didn’t have marriages the way humans did, and he had never really understood the point of them. 

A sound scuffed on the roof behind her and Judith twisted around, connection snapped as she searched for an enemy.  Instead, it was Yuri climbing up to the roof from an open window.  He straightened up on the old shingled roof and climbed to meet her at the peak. 

“Hey.”  Yuri took a seat between Judith and the chimney.  “You look comfy up here.”

Judith hugged her knees.  “The sky is beautiful tonight.”

Yuri leaned back and followed her gaze.  “Yeah, it sure is… blue.”

“Wow, aren’t you a poet?”

“I try.  Anyway, I don’t want to bother you if you’d rather be alone, but I just spent an hour trying to console Estelle and I still don’t know what happened and I was hoping you could help me out.”

Judith glanced at him and saw the damp patch on his shoulder.  Guilt and pain spiked.  She hung her hand and pressed her forehead into her hand.  “It’s my fault, really.  Estelle… asked me to marry her.”

If Yuri was shocked by this, he didn’t show it.  “And, uh, based on her reaction I’m guessing you said no?”

Judith hesitated.  She didn’t think she’d said no, exactly.  She’d been too shocked to really say anything at all.  “I… didn’t say yes.”

“Huh.  Ok, well, that explains why she was so upset.”

Judith cringed.  She wasn’t good at words, and definitely didn’t have enough to articulate how awful she felt at making Estelle so miserable.  After a long moment of saying nothing, Yuri started to get up.  Judith grabbed his wrist to keep him from leaving.

“Wait.  Before you go reassure Estelle that there are other women out there, I want to talk to you.”

Yuri sank back to the roof.  “Sure.  Do you wanna talk about why you turned her down?”

“What do you think about marriage?”

Yuri stared at her and then slowly shrugged.  He pulled his wrist back to his lap and said, “I don’t think about it much, honestly.  If I were dating someone, I don’t think I’d feel the need to get the government involved in declaring they aren’t allowed to leave.”

Judith smiled a little.  “That’s roughly how I feel.”

“I don’t think Estelle sees it that way, though.  You know how she is, with her head in the clouds and nose in a book.  I don’t think she sees it as a legal contract.”

“No, I don’t think so.”  But that wasn’t Judith’s main objection to it.  She tried to find the words to explain to Yuri what she’d explained to Ba’ul, about the concept of marriage diluting something rare and wonderful by forcing it into a box of definitions.  The concept seemed so clear in her mind, and she wished for a moment that Yuri were an Entelexeia so she could transmit that thought to him wordlessly as she could with Ba’ul.

In a flash of wordless understanding, she suddenly realized what her problem truly was.

“I think… I think I'm too close with Ba’ul.”

Yuri raised his eyebrows.  “Judy, you’re my friend and I love you but that is a weird thing to say when questioning having a relationship with a human girl.”

Judith just smiled and elbowed him in the ribs.  “I need to talk to Estelle.”  Really talk.  Talk the way that humans talked to each other, the way humans _needed_ to talk to each other.  “Where is she?”

“In my room.”

“Thank you for talking with me, Yuri.”  She stood and made her way down to the open window.

“Yeah, no problem.  It’s so nice to have these long talks with you, Judy,” Yuri called after her.

Judith looked over her shoulder with a wink and then dropped down to swing through the window.  At Yuri’s door, she knocked.  There was no sound, but that no sound had come right after a muffled sob that immediately cut off.  Estelle needed to be better at pretending she was asleep.  

Judith pushed the door open.  “Estelle?  I want to talk.”

Estelle looked up from Yuri’s bed with red eyes and a flushed face.  “O-oh.”  She slowly sat up and tried to rub tears away from her face.  “It’s ok, Judith.  It’s my fault.  I was… stupid.  I just, I grew up reading so many books where the heroine gets married and has a happily ever after.  I thought happily ever after and getting married were the same thing.”  She was upright now, sitting on the bed with her hands in her lap and face to the floor.  “I guess I saw what I wanted in our relationship, without thinking about what _you_ wanted… or how serious it was for you.”

Judith slowly sat on the bed, her chest aching.  How serious it was for her?  Judith adored Estelle more than she could say.  More than she ever had said, actually… which was precisely the problem.

“Estelle… it isn’t your fault.  It’s mine.  I haven’t been fair to you.”

Estelle glanced over, confused.

“When I was a younger, after my father died, it was just me and Ba’ul.  For so longer, he was my only friend.  I shared everything with him, all my thoughts and feelings and emotions….”  She ran a hand over one of her tentacles.  “I never had to think about what to say to him.  I didn’t often speak to him with words, even.  Telepathy between Krityans and Entelexeia isn’t through words, really.  We share thoughts, concepts, images, and emotions.  Things between us never had to be _said_ to be understood.”

Judith twisted and rested a hand on Estelle’s thigh.  She smiled as she met Estelle’s tear-stricken eyes.  “But then I met all of you.  I had to start getting used to expressing myself through words in a way I never had to with Ba’ul.  But it turns out, I am not very good at sharing those concepts that were only ever subtext with Ba’ul.  I’ve never told Ba’ul I love him, because the thought of loving him accompanies every message I share with him.  But humans are not telepathic, and it isn’t fair to my friends to keep those words inside.  It isn’t fair to _you_.”

“J-Judith….”  Estelle’s hand rested on top of Judith’s. 

“I… love you, Estelle.”  She savoured the word, relishing its depth as it left her lips, but even with the power it carried, it was too small a word to express the extent of her feelings for Estelle.  Unlike with Ba’ul, though, she couldn’t send the entire extent of the feeling woven in with every sharing of ideas.  This word was all she had, and Estelle deserved to hear it more.  Maybe if she said it a hundred times, they could cumulatively add up to the impossible word she wished existed. “I’ve never liked trying to fit big ideas into simple words, but I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

Estelle breathed in a little tighter and squeezed Judith’s hand. 

“And,” Judith continued, though her heart beat so hard that it almost clogged her throat and kept the words from coming out, “if having a big ceremony to declare in front of all our friends that we mean to be together forever will be meaningful for you, then I am happy to marry you.”

Estelle’s eyes still shimmered with tears, but they had gone wide with joy.  She threw herself at Judith, tackling her onto the bed and pinning her down with her hug.  “Oh, Judith,” she gushed before doing away with words to express her elation purely through kisses. 


End file.
